Reception class news 18:03:22

My goodness, the days seem to be whizzing by this term Reception class.
It was lovely to finish our week dressed up for red nose day, eat some yummy cakes and share some very funny jokes!

Let us share in our learning from another busy and fun filled week...

Understanding the World Development

This week is National Science Week and we began by considering what a scientist looks like. We understood that a scientist could be a man or a woman, they may wear special protective clothing when they are doing experiments, like safety goggles and aprons. We then drew a picture of what we thought they might look like.

Linked to our class theme of dinosaurs we explored the scientist Mary Anning. We understand that Mary used to find fossils along the coast line where she lived as a child and although she didn't know what they were at first, she knew they were special and used to sell them for a penny. One day she met a lady called Elizabeth Philpot, who was a fossil expert, who showed Mary some fossils she had collected and gave her books to read. The books taught Mary that scientists thought that the objects she had found were actually creatures that had lived a very long time ago.

We found it very exciting to learn that some years later, whilst walking along the beach, Mary made an amazing discovery. She had found a giant fossil that no one had ever seen before. It was the skull of a giant creature that looked like a crocodile. She had found the first complete fossil of an Ichthyosaurus or 'fish-lizard'

We learnt that fossils were created by layers of mud hardening over animal skeletons over many years and so created our own fossils using clay and imprinting dinosaur skeletons onto it.

Our science theme this year is growth, so we got wrapped up and had a good walk around the school grounds to see signs of new life and growth. We couldn't see any blossom on our trees yet, but the daffodils have stated to flower and looked beautiful dancing in the afternoon sunshine. When we discussed what plants need to grow, we understood that they need water, light and medium to grow in.

Recapping on a simple life cycle of a plant, we discussed the germination stage and how that often takes place beneath the soil and we can't see it. Using natural cotton, moistened in water we placed our tomato seeds on top and we are excited to watch over the coming weeks to see if they germinate so we can plant them up as seedlings.

Mathematical Development

Our focus for learning this week has been subtraction, specifically looking at the number bonds to 10. We began by consolidating our understanding of the different number bonds to 10, using our fingers and saying the parts and whole number in a number sentence. We had a fantastic parrot song to help us with the concept of taking one away and seeing how many were left. We then started to look at ten as our whole number and took different numbers away to see how many were left. Our knowledge of number bonds really helped us out with this concept. Using a part whole model we then started to show our whole number broken down into two parts in various configurations and explained it in a sentence: 10, take away 2 is 8.

Creative Arts and Design Development

Today in music we talked about what a composer is, we learnt that a composer is the person that writes music, we shared some stories that have music in them that we have heard of or seen, these included Sing 2, Frozen and Encanto. Next we learnt about the composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. We heard about how he wrote and produced lots of different musicals including; Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats. We listened to "Memories" from the musical Cats. We talked about what we had listened to and what we thought of it, most of it said it made us feel calm, we thought she had a beautiful voice and her makeup was fantastic. We talked about how the song was quite sad and that the cat sounded sad because she was all on her own. Next we listened to "Joseph's Coat of Many Colours" from Joseph the Musical. During our discussion we talked about how we really liked this song, we loved how bright the video was and wanted to watch it again.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

With Boris in our Heartsmart session his week, we have learnt to listen to one another as part of being a good friend. To help develop our good listening ears we played a game where we sat back to back with a partner, each with a set of identical objects. Taking turns we had to describe an object and see if our partner listened carefully to the clues and selected the same item as us.

Boris says, 'Listening carefully to what our friends say is very important.'

'Everyone must be quick to listen, but slow to speak and slow to become angry.' James 1:19

Literacy Development

In our daily phonics sessions we have continued to recap known sounds and explored new sounds in listening, reading and writing activities. We have also practiced our formation of 'down letters' h, m, n, r and u in our daily handwriting activities.
This week we have continued to build our confidence and independence as writers as we completed our correspondence with T.Rex at the city museum. We have taken him up on his offer to ask him lots of questions about dinosaurs. Hopefully he will write back to us soon with the answers.

Communication and Language Development
This week we have continued to read and enjoy fiction and non-fiction books about dinosaurs, encountering and understanding new vocabulary.

Physical Development

In our PE session with Mrs Swan, we continued to develop our skills of controlling a ball with our hands, carefully bouncing a ball once to a partner, negotiating space to doge whilst bouncing a ball and moving in a range of ways making changes to our body shape while keeping control of the ball.

Mrs Ward and Mrs Wainwright